Sunshine Beach Primary School

Sponsored by Slow Food Noosa

My daughters' school. When I arrived on the Sunshine Coast,
they already had a permaculture garden at the school which had
been designed by Geoff Lawton and Dave Clark. It had a frog
pond and lots of fruit trees surrounding the vegie garden.

They had designed it knowing there would be times when the garden
wouldn't be used but with the fruit trees it would still be
productive and look good. Working as a volunteer with the
students, we got the vegie gardens up and running again.

The school offered me a job working one on one in the garden with
students with behavioural problems. We had very busy
lessons and achieved lots. It was a very rewarding
experience working with these kids and seeing the difference that
working in the garden on a Monday made to their behaviour for the
rest of the week.

Years down the track, one boy in particular came to visit me and
told me how he had set up a vegie garden at his High School and
was doing everything I taught him!!!

I then successfully got funding to run the edible school gardens
program at the school, taking groups from different classes but
unfortunately I had to leave that school because I wasn't getting
any support for the program from the teachers. They loved
the idea but no one was prepared to follow through with the
simple tasks I had asked of them such as watering new
seedlings.

It took me a long time to work out why I couldn't run a
successful program at my own children's school whereas I could at
others - the answer - I was seen as a parent doing gardening, not
as an educator coming in to run a special program.

I naturally wanted this garden to be the show piece of Edible
School Gardens as it was my children's school and I was happy to
put in extra time but a successful garden requires more than one
person. The garden remains idle, but the fruit trees
continue to produce.

NOTE: As the Edible School Gardens program is being developed and
constantly improved, it is important that I look back on each
school and evaluate how the program ran in that school and if it
could have been done differently to make it more
successful. Here I talk honestly about all those
things that could have been done differently so that hopefully
you won't make the same mistakes.

Update January 2009:

It is encouraging to speak with many parents that are keen to get
the permaculture garden running again. I will work with
parents in helping them revive the garden, all the systems are
there, they just need activating. I'm excited to know that
my first ever school garden will be happening again.

Slow Food Noosa have sponsored me to go back into Sunshine Beach
State School this year, once a month, to re-charge there
permaculture garden and teach the new parents and teachers about
the program and demonstrate to them the processes of the Edible
School Garden Program. There is a huge support from parents
arriving each gardening day to join in with the students, and the
teachers are using the garden as a teaching tool The plants
causing the most interest in the garden are wasabi lettuce
(that's hot) and chocolate mint (tastes like chocolate).
The students aren't hestitating to eat their produce. We
have some very determined scrub turkeys which are being
successful at getting into parts of our edible school garden and
causing us many problems.

Katrina Ryan from Slow Food Noosa has had a harvest day with the
students, cooking up some lunch with the students. The
students had a wonderful day and Katrina thoroughly enjoyed
teaching the students and seeing how excited the kids were to
pick, then cook up their own lunch.